MY ITALIAN RELATIVES STILL SCOFF AT ME WHEN I SKIP THE BREAD
AT DINNER. They say, “But it’s the weekend! Nobody diets on the weekend!”
To be clear, the ketogenic diet doesn’t break for weekends. It doesn’t flip its hair and sneak candy from the bowl while the cauliflower isn’t looking. Staying in ketosis is a full-time job, but after you break through your carb withdrawals in week one, you’re going to be so pumped with energy that you’ll be slaying doughnuts and mashed potatoes with the sword of shame.
Over the past decade, I’ve talked to people from all walks of life who are on the ketogenic diet. While the diet has been used to treat epilepsy informally since at least 500 BC, it’s been recommended by the medical community since the 1920s.1 But most commonly, people reach out to me for a host of other reasons, not just because they have epilepsy and need to change their diet. I’ve spoken with patients who are using the ketogenic diet as recommended by the nutritionist at their cancer centers, and I’ve even met people who have used the diet to combat
anxiety and depression. In addition to weight loss, going keto helped me fight chronic vertigo, which prevented me from driving for three years.
Glucose imbalance, the result of eating a diet heavy in breads, sugars, starches and pasta, is said to be harmful to the brain, so it’s no wonder when glucose is replaced with ketones. A ketogenic diet can help to restore brain function for people who suffer with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (also sometimes referred to as type 3 diabetes2). A brain that isn’t hopped up on sugar is a happy brain!
This book you’re about to read is an excellent guide to following a ketogenic diet, no matter how much weight you want to lose, or how much of your life you want to regain.
1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19049574
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/
Whenever you approach a diet, you should go into it thinking that you’re
adapting to a healthier lifestyle. However, in the ketogenic community, you’ll often find forums and Facebook groups riddled with ketogenic junkfood (Take your McDonald’s burger, throw away the bun, and flip it inside out! Yeah! Ketofriendly!). What I love about this book is that it brings healthy ingredients to the forefront, without being snobby. This diet is heavy on fat, so why not choose healthy ones that provide additional health benefits, like coconut oil, ghee, and avocado? Hang those highly processed oils, like vegetable oils and soybean oils, out to dry.
In addition, you’ll find specific examples throughout this book; for example, berries are a-ok, but you shouldn’t eat bananas because they contain more than your daily intake of carbohydrates. And chapter 2, on setting up your kitchen, includes a crucial set of equipment for making delicious ketogenic meals (a castiron pan, especially!).
The section on keto-friendly alternatives is particularly useful, because you may not know that a cup of milk has 13 net carbs, while unsweetened almond milk contains zero carbs (and is just as tasty!). I’ve known numerous people who assumed they can eat rice on this diet (it’s like Paleo, right?) and I need to explain that rice has 44 net carbs per (cooked) cup. When you tell them you’re shooting for less than 20 net carbs per day, it just about blows their mind.
And probably my favorite part of the book? Every recipe is 6 carbs! That’s some no-brainer type of keto stuff I can get behind. Enjoy this book and your path to ketogenic wellness!
Amanda C. Hughes
Keto Cook at WickedStuffed.com
Author of Keto Life and The Wicked Good Ketogenic Diet Cookbook